Captain Copyright, submitted by di4gram. One of the favorite propaganda methods of North Korea’s peculiarly xenophobic brand of communism is to transform everyday people into heroes of the nation. Workers, teachers, farmers and even animals and inanimate objects can be declared as heroes of North Korea. Those chosen serve as representatives of the communist ideal in North Korea and they have their face plastered all over billboards and appearing in newspapers. Meet the pathetic capitalist equivalent (from Canada of all places) of one of North Korea’s propaganda heroes: Captain Copyright.

Yes, Captain Copyright is here to defend the noble artists, and just by chance their producers, in their battle against the rapacious copyright infringers. What makes Captain Copyright even more like one of those North Korean state-made heroes is the section on his website for teachers. It has a syllabus for educating kids from first grade on up in the intricacies of copyright law.

Activity 1Who is Captain Copyright? This activity will introduce the concept of copyright to the students, using physical examples of everyday classroom items. They will also learn what the copyright symbol looks like and be able to identify it on items.

Put down that tracing paper, kid, that is an illegal reproduction of copyrighted material!